Three Blogs for 2012 (and Some Dead Turkeys and a Rat, Too)

I have a million things on my mind but few fit for expression here. I don't feel like doing a banal New Year's "Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012" post. The rest of the blog already tells the 2011 story. Go back and read the posts you missed if you want a retrospective. And 2012 is still anybody's guess. I also tried to do an entertaining review of Christmas dinner with the Tea Party Branch of the Family of Peaches, but I ended up on an angry vegan rampage with nothing to show for it but pictures of factory farmed turkeys (Ha! You get those anyway!):

But lest I further spoil your appetite and until I come upon thoughts of my own more fit for blogging, go check out, if you haven't already, new postacademic blogs by:

Currer Bell at Project Reinvention 2012 and WTF have I done with my life at Unemployed PhD for Hire. Both add to the growing chorus of academics -- for a host of excellent reasons -- who are beginning to walk away.

Also, I stumbled on Notes from Babel today, which I recommend visiting if you love words like I do. Although the author is a conservative and the political posts are distasteful (yet thoughtful), the language posts illustrate that just because we might disagree about what's good policy doesn't mean we can't wholeheartedly agree about what's good English. I was poking around the Internet to see if someone else might have an explanation for why my brain dead, 5:00 PM self found the phrase "yeoman's work" out of place in a Think Tank "annual report," and this post nails it. Although the author appears to be migrating here (and it is unclear if he will continue writing about language), go read this post and this post at the very least.What was it 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School said waaaaaaaay back at the beginning about the smart people being somewhere else?

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And, well, this is just a cute little something in case you need something to make yourself feel better about eating dead turkeys: